Monday Harvest – Oct 1st 2012

Its pretty slim pickings in my garden at the moment.  Except for lettuce that is – I have a lot of lettuce.  The leaves in the below basket are Cos.  Also pictured is some of the last of the broccoli.  I pulled a few plants today to make way for summer crops – I have left a couple of broccoli plants in but I’m not altogether convinced they will produce much more.

Also still producing, albeit while bolting, is the parsley.  I have pulled some of the parsley but still have a few monsters in the ground.  As you can see its at least the same height as the broad beans.

Also bolting, or at least some of the plants are, is my coriander.  I harvested this bunch to for both guacamole and to garnish a curry.

Another spring bolter is my Swiss Chard (silver beet) I am happily chopping off the flower stalks to keep it going as long as possible.  This lot went into a Chard & Ricotta cannelloni.

I harvested the first of my winter grown potatoes this week.  I got 600g from a 40cm pot which isn’t anything like what I get in Spring (about double to triple that) but was still better than both the Summer and Autumn harvests.  This is a mix of Cranberry Red and Dutch Cream.

My final harvest this week (other than herbs and spring onions which I didn’t photograph) was some green garlic.  I planted up a few pots with very closely planted cloves with the intention of harvesting it green.  The dreaded black aphids attacked one of the pots so these are a few very weak specimens but they tasted good nonetheless.

Incidentally the only thing I’ve found to be effective against black aphids is pyrethrum.  Spraying them with water just seems to make the problem worse – they like damp conditions.  Squishing them works reasonably well although I always seem to miss a few and they return pretty quickly (also if you forget to wear gloves you get purple fingers).  Pyrethrum which I don’t like to use unless everything else has failed has proved really effective against the ones in my garden – I have got rid of populations on both my garlic and garlic chives.

As usual this post forms part of Daphne’s wonderful Harvest Mondays – head over and see what else is hitting the harvest basket.